A little-remembered provision of the U.S. Constitution: “No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States” (Article I, Section 9).  By this proviso the Founding Fathers affirmed the republican principle that nobody is entitled to power merely because of who he is.  Americans wanted to repudiate the hereditary privilege of the Old World by which people had power in government by virtue of birth, often without merit or usefulness to the commonwealth.  Thomas Jefferson and John Adams agreed that republican government should be in the hands of a “natural aristocracy” of talent and virtue.  Jefferson said that no one is born with the right to ride with boot and spurs over the backs of the citizens.  Adams feared that the people might be misled by the glamor of high birth into choosing the wrong rulers.

If Americans took this provision of the Constitution seriously, Barack Obama would never have been allowed to run for president.  All of his adult life Obama has been treated as a privileged aristocrat because of who he is.  He came to every position he has filled without any record of legislative, administrative, or military service or accomplishment.  He has been raised to power entirely because of his birth.  There are tens of thousands like him spread throughout all the ruling institutions of the United States.  He has a smooth manner and a gift for low-key demagoguery, but no other qualifications for the most powerful office in the world.

An unnoticed irony is that this first “African-American” president is not really an “African-American” in the usual sense of a descendant of American slaves.  He is an African, son of an African petty chieftain, from a family who were very likely slave traders, and of a crazed white Midwestern 60’s radical of an all too common type.  Anyone who wants to understand the Obama lineage should read the works of the forgotten outstanding writer Robert Ruark on Kenya: Uhuru! and Something of Value.

Obama profited from the widespread disgust and demoralization created by eight years of George W. Bush’s ignorance, incompetence, deceitfulness, and unrepentant fecklessness.  He also profited by the accident of not being of full-blooded African descent.  Although they will never admit it, American egalitarians have always secretly preferred mixed bloods to full-blooded Africans.  All you have to do is remember the number of almost-white slaves who appear in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Some people seem to be upset that Obama has been showing signs of the behavior of a Third World dictator.  Why should this be any surprise?   That is what most of the people who voted for him and celebrated his rise to power wanted him to be.  If that is really the case, the only remedy is an opposition party—one that is articulate and determined and can appeal to the people with courage and honesty about the sad state of the Union.  But there is no opposition party.  There is a self-serving, principle-less organization called the Republican Party.  It has not been an opposition party since at least the 1930’s.  It is merely a device maintained by the ruling elite to absorb and neuter discontent—a somewhat prettified carbon copy of the dominant party.